Watch: Ten-year-old fifth grader makes shocking STEM discovery

By staff and wire services reports

February 7th, 2012

Now that Clara Lazen of Kansas City, Mo. has been published in a major chemistry journal, she can set her sights on a new goal: graduating elementary school, the Huffington Post reports. How did she do it? The 10-year-old was experimenting with a molecule-building toy during a class assignment when she stumbled upon an unusual-looking molecule. Her intrigued teacher, Kenneth Boehr, photographed it and sent it to his college buddy Robert Zoellner, a chemistry professor at Humboldt State University in California. Zoellner found that the simple but specific chemical had never been seen before…